…
This was going to suck.
Garp finished chewing his rice cracker, looked at the seastone cuff around my wrist, then followed the chain down to the enormous treasure chest Nami had attached me to.
His eyebrows rose.
"Well," he said. "That's embarrassing."
"It was a complicated betrayal."
"Looks pretty simple."
Garp reached into his coat for another rice cracker. Around him, Marines and Crest's guards filled the ruined entrance to the vault, weapons raised, waiting for the legendary Vice Admiral to perform some deeply professional arresting procedure.
Garp cracked his knuckles.
Then he grabbed me.
"Wait, wait, wait, we can discuss this like civilised men." I tried to yell, his hand covering my face.
"Bwahahaha!"
He threw me through the wall.
Not toward the wall.
Through it.
My back hit brick, and suddenly I was flying across the warehouse in a cloud of dust, splinters and papers. The treasure chest followed for half a second before the handle snapped off with a metallic shriek.
I hit the next wall shoulder-first, folded around a wooden support beam, and dropped onto the floor with the broken chest handle still dangling from the other end of my cuff.
Coins rained through the hole behind me.
Marlo Crest made a noise like someone had punched his bank account.
"My warehouse!"
Garp stepped through the opening he had made, brushing dust from his coat.
"Bwahahaha! Sorry about that."
"You cannot simply destroy private property!"
Garp looked around at the stolen Marine rifles, relief medicine and bribery records covering the room.
"Private, huh?"
Crest shut his mouth.
I tried to push myself up.
My fingers slipped.
The cuff sat tight around my wrist, cold enough that the weakness seemed to spread straight into my bones. My arm trembled beneath me, and my legs had apparently surrendered. I truly felt like shit.
A regular Marine ran forward and kicked me in the ribs.
Normally, that wouldn't have done anything. But it made me fold over in pain, then another Marine grabbed my hair. Two seized my arms, and a fourth jumped onto my back.
"We have him!"
"No, you fucking don't." I yelled.
More bodies piled on. A knee pressed into my spine. Someone twisted my cuffed wrist behind me, driving the seastone harder against my skin until black spots swam across my vision.
Garp crouched nearby, eating.
"You're not doing very well," he observed.
"Fuck you!" I spat
One of the Marines punched me in the kidney.
I coughed into the floor.
"Bwahahaha!"
My fingers twitched against the boards.
Clink.
My thumb moved.
Then my index finger.
I dug them into the floor and pushed. It was pathetic. Barely enough to lift my cheek from the wood, but the Marine sitting across my shoulders felt it.
"Hold him down!"
"I am holding him down!" One yelled
"Then do it harder!"
I got one knee underneath me.
Three Marines immediately climbed higher.
Garp reached down, grabbed the back of my shirt and lifted me along with everyone attached.
The Marines screamed.
I hung there beneath his fist..
"Vice Admiral," one of them said carefully, "we are still on him."
"I noticed."
Garp swung me sideways.
Every Marine detached at once.
I did not.
He released me into a stack of cargo crates.
The first crate exploded around my shoulder. The second broke across my spine. I went through the third face-first and came out wearing a sack of flour.
My vision went white as I was covered in flour.
Then Garp flicked a rice cracker.
It hit me between the eyes.
My head snapped back hard enough to crack the wall behind me.
I slowly slid down it, flour coating my hair, blood running from my nose and a fresh cut opening along my temple.
Garp stared at the broken rice cracker crumbs near my feet.
"Huh. That one was stale."
"You are a deeply unserious person, aren't you?" I coughed.
"Bwahahaha!"
I wiped the blood from my face and tried standing again.
My knees shook, though they held this time.
Clink.
My feet settled beneath me.
A guard charged with a sword. I saw the blade coming. My body understood the angle, the timing and the fact that getting stabbed would probably reduce my chances of leaving.
My body then failed to move quickly enough.
The sword opened my side.
I hissed, caught the guard's wrist with my working hand and attempted to throw him.
Attempted.
He remained exactly where he was.
We both looked at my hand.
"That was meant to be much cooler."
He kneed me in the gut.
Another Marine drove into my back. Two grabbed my legs. I went down again under a fresh dog pile, boots scraping uselessly across the floor while Garp wandered closer.
"Got any tricks?" he asked.
"Yes."
"What are they?"
"Not telling you." I stuck my tongue out
Garp kicked me.
The pile of Marines and I crossed the warehouse together.
We tore through shelves, a cart and the front doors before spilling into the street in a screaming collection of limbs. I bounced twice across the stone, leaving skin and blood behind, then slammed into a fruit stall.
Apples rolled everywhere.
The merchant stared at the wreckage.
"You break it, you buy it!"
"Put it on the government tab," Garp said..
Garp stepped through the destroyed entrance behind us.
The merchant looked at him, recognised him and immediately bowed.
"Pleasure doing business."
Coward.
I shoved the Marines off me.
This time, they actually moved.
The first rolled away, the second lost his grip, and the third received an elbow across the mouth.
Clink.
My legs straightened.
I stood.
The cut in my side was already pulling itself closed, the bleeding slowing as damaged skin crawled together beneath my torn shirt. My nose clicked somewhere unpleasantly and straightened enough for air to pass through it again.
A Marine pointed.
"His wounds!"
"I know!" I yelled. "Very handsome, thank you!"
"That isn't what I meant!"
I threw him through the remains of the apple stall.
Then I ran.
Port Tragedy was crowded, narrow and apparently designed by someone who hated fugitives and big boys. Carts blocked half the road while merchants filled the rest. Crest's guards poured from side streets while bells rang throughout the port.
"Stop him!"
"The white-haired criminal!"
A group of Marines misunderstood and instead tackled an elderly woman with white hair.
She beat two of them unconscious with a fish.
I respected the hustle.
Garp followed at a light jog.
A light jog.
I was forcing my legs to move through sea-stone weakness while blood dripped into my eye and the most dangerous grandfather alive was taking a pleasant afternoon stroll behind me.
"Slow down!" he called.
"No!"
"I'm getting old!" He exclaimed
"Then retire!" I replied
"Bwahahaha!"
Something whistled past my ear and blew apart a stone fountain ahead.
I looked back.
Garp held a coin between two fingers.
"Oh, fuck off!"
He flicked another.
I saw it coming, but couldn't dodge it.
The coin struck my shoulder and spun me through the window of a bakery.
I landed across a table covered in fresh dough. The baker froze with a rolling pin in his hands.
I lifted my face from the flour.
"Morning."
"You ruined my bread!"
"Garp ruined your bread." I huffed
A rice cracker blasted through the wall behind me and struck the oven.
The oven collapsed.
The baker looked at the hole.
Then at me.
"Fucking marines" The baker sighed,
I stumbled through the opposite door into an alley, dragging the loose handle behind me. It caught around a barrel.
My arm snapped backward.
I hit the ground.
Garp appeared at the alley entrance, still chewing.
"You should be more careful."
"I am being hunted by you of all people!"
"That's no excuse for poor footwork."
He picked up the barrel and threw it.
I rolled.
The barrel clipped my hip and launched me into the side of a shop. Wood cracked around my body, and half the upper floor dropped onto my head.
My vision disappeared beneath boards, clothes and somebody's bathtub.
A woman screamed from upstairs.
"Sorry!"
"You're in my bedroom!"
"Then why is the bath here?"
It was in the middle of her living room.
"Rent is expensive!"
Valid.
I shoved the wreckage aside. My broken chain slid free from the barrel without catching this time.
Clink.
The links rolled smoothly over the ground behind me. My next step cleared the wreckage without snagging, and when the roof shifted beneath my weight, I moved with it instead of going straight through somebody else's living arrangements.
I climbed.
My arms still felt filled with wet sand, though they pulled me up now.
I ran across the rooftops toward the docks.
Tiles cracked beneath my boots. Laundry lines wrapped around my chest. A pair of trousers slapped across my face.
A woman leaned from a window.
"Pervert!"
She threw a bucket.
The water hit the roof.
My legs nearly vanished underneath me as seawater soaked through my boots.
"Why the hell was that seawater?" I cried
"It removes stains!"
"What stains are you fighting!?"
She threw the bucket too.
I jumped the gap to the next roof.
My foot slipped on landing. I caught myself, pushed forward and nearly slipped again.
Clink.
My stride shifted.
The next rooftop tilted beneath me, but my feet found the stable points between the tiles. I crossed it properly, chain rattling behind me in a steady rhythm.
This entire situation was Nami's fault.
Mostly.
There were other contributing factors, such as me following her into an alley, revealing most of the secrets she had, proposing a robbery and letting a professional thief stand close enough to cuff me.
Minor administrative errors on my part, you might even say I was "fanboying", and that allegation was false, defamatory and harmful to my future brand.
I had simply been excited to meet someone I recognised. Anyone would be. That was normal and any one of youse woulda done the same!
I jumped another gap.
Okay, I had fanboyed a little.
Barely.
I had trusted the Nami I knew. The future, Straw Hat Nami. The woman who would risk her life for her crew, fight impossible enemies and rob her friends in a charming, socially acceptable manner.
The Nami I had actually met was still the pirate-hating thief under Arlong's boot who trusted money more than people and had known me for several hours.
In hindsight, letting her walk behind me with seastone equipment had been an unusual tactical choice, but when I catch her, I'm gonna hang her upside down from a mast and shake her until every berry fell out. Then I would charge interest. Maybe fart on her pillow.
No, that lacked dignity.
I would hire someone else to fart on her pillow.
Garp's fist came through the roof beneath me.
The entire building erupted.
I flew upward in a storm of tiles, screaming something that probably sounded brave to anyone who did not understand language. Garp jumped through the collapsing structure after me, grabbed my ankle in mid-air and swung me down into the next rooftop.
I went through it.
And the floor beneath that.
And the floor beneath that.
I landed in the middle of a crowded restaurant, folded over a table while everyone continued eating in silence.
A man lifted his bowl before my head crushed it.
"Thank you," I muttered.
Garp dropped through the ceiling.
The customers ran.
I rolled off the table as his foot came down. The impact erased the floor where I had been and opened a direct path into the cellar.
I avoided it.
Actually avoided it.
Garp's eyebrows lifted.
I was already moving toward the door.
"Bwahahaha! There you go!"
"Stop encouraging me!"
I burst back into the street.
The docks were ahead.
Ships rocked beyond the warehouses, their sails lowered, crews staring toward the destruction spreading through Port Tragedy. I could steal any of them. I had no standards anymore. Rowboat, merchant ship, floating door, large obedient fish.
Freedom was thirty seconds away.
Smoke rolled across the street.
It came from nowhere, thick and white, spilling between buildings and swallowing the road to the docks. Civilians disappeared inside it. Marines backed away.
A man stepped through the centre with one cigar clenched between his teeth.
He was younger than the Smoker I remembered. Fewer scars, cleaner face, slightly less exhausted by the continued existence of pirates.
Still unmistakably Smoker.
A jitte rested across his shoulder.
The metal tip made my cuffed wrist feel colder from ten metres away.
Wonderful. Another canon character.
This day had too much fan service, fuck you ROBs!
Smoker exhaled smoke through his nose. "Kai Voss."
"Allegedly."
"You're under arrest."
"Already heard that one." I huffed
Smoker's eyes narrowed as smoke spread across every alley leading toward the docks.
I glanced back.
Garp stood on the remains of a market cart, eating rice crackers while the owner stared at the crushed wheels with tears in his eyes.
"Don't mind me," Garp called. "Bwahahaha!"
I looked at Smoker.
"Listen, bro. I don't want to fight you." I waved my hand.
"Good."
"So you'll let me pass?"
"No."
"You misunderstood the spirit of what I was saying."
I moved left.
Smoke blocked the alley.
I went right.
More smoke.
I jumped for the roof.
A white arm formed around my ankle and slammed me back into the street.
The impact split my lip open again.
Smoker appeared from the smoke above me, jitte descending toward my chest.
I rolled just before the seastone tip struck the stone. The weakness from my cuff surged anyway, my stomach turning at the proximity.
I kicked at his knee.
My leg passed through smoke.
"Right," I muttered. "Forgot how annoying this bullshit is."
Smoker's fist reformed inside my guard and struck my jaw. Smoke wrapped around my throat, lifted me and threw me through a vegetable cart.
The merchant raised both hands.
"Why is it always my cart?"
"I've never met you!"
"Then why do you hate me?"
Smoker's smoke dragged me back by the neck.
His jitte struck my ribs.
The metal shaft hurt. The seastone tip barely grazed my side.
My body shut down.
I dropped flat at Smoker's feet, fingers refusing to close, lungs suddenly forgetting the long-term benefits of breathing.
Smoker planted the jitte against my chest.
"Done."
Garp laughed from nearby.
"Bwahahaha! That was quick."
I looked up at Smoker.
"I need you to understand," I whispered, "how badly I cannot afford to lose in front of that man."
Smoker pressed harder.
"Not my problem."
Smoke tightened around my arms.
I swung anyway.
My fist passed through his face.
Smoker reformed beside me and drove his knee into my stomach. The hit launched me backward, though the smoke around my wrist pulled me sharply in the opposite direction. My shoulder dislocated with a wet pop.
I screamed.
Not dramatically.
Very masculinely.
My arm hung wrong as Smoker advanced, his body dissolving and reforming through the smoke. My eyes watered. The street vanished inside the haze. I could hear boots, shifting pressure and Garp loudly eating something crunchy.
The smoke moved against my skin.
Left.
Behind.
Above.
Clink.
A current bent near my cheek.
I ducked.
Smoker's jitte passed over my head.
Another pressure change formed near my ribs. I twisted before his fist solidified, letting it scrape across my side instead of burying itself into my organs.
Smoker paused.
I grabbed my dislocated arm and shoved it back into place.
The swelling along my shoulder had already begun to fade.
He dissolved again.
The smoke surged from three directions.
I stopped watching for his body.
The currents gathered first. Smoke pulled inward where his shoulder formed, pressure thickened near the ground where his foot would plant, and the cigar ember appeared half a second before his face.
I swung my cuffed wrist.
Smoker shifted.
Too late.
The seastone cuff struck him across the jaw.
For the first time, there was no smoke but some fleshy flesh.
Smoker's head snapped sideways, the cigar flying from his mouth as his body crashed through the wall of the vegetable shop behind him.
The street went silent.
Garp lowered his rice cracker.
Then his grin widened.
"Bwahahaha! Bravo!"
Smoke exploded from the ruined shop.
It flooded the street, climbed the buildings and swallowed the sky above us. Smoker stepped from the wreckage, blood running from the corner of his mouth, his jitte held low in one hand.
His face had changed.
No boredom. No irritation.
He looked at the cuff around my wrist, then directly at me.
I slowly raised my fists.
"Hehe, you don't want the smoke!" I exclaimed. (￣y▽,￣)╭
…
End of Chapter!
Word Count - 2807